Pop Goes the World

There’s little I can add to all the tributes and reflections gumming up the web these days, but like so many others I feel compelled to say something. Inspired even. I found Andrew Sullivan’s and Jeff Chang’s posts pretty resonant, Jason King’s too, among others, and I’ve been particularly struck by all the MJ music […]

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But I’m Not a Leprechaun

Longtime readers have heard on previous March 17s this here mini-mix of “trad” Irish beats and stompin electronic shuffle. For those of you looking for a little seasonal soundtrack, here you go again —       >> w&w “doctorin the guinness” (9 min / 9 mb)       [audio:http://wayneandwax.com/riddimmeth0d/wayneandwax_doctorin-the-guinness.mp3] This should be especially resonant if, say, you’re on your […]

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Music Unites Us, Gets Under Our Skins

I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce this — At a time when the arts community at Brandeis is feeling rightly beleaguered, it brings me no little satisfaction to know that we will be putting on a rather art-ful residency later this month, sponsoring the US premiere of such an exciting, provocative, and relevant group […]

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Old (and Not So Old) Weird (and Not So Weird) America

We’re visiting Becca’s sister, her husband, and their 6-month-old twins in North Carolina this week. Initially drawn to Durham/Duke, Leila&Sebastian und Sasha&Max now live in a small-ish town called Burlington, in an old mill house they rebuilt themselves (with a little help from their friends). Yesterday, we escaped some rainy morning blues by heading to […]

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Welcome to Brownsville

Former wunderkind hip-hop critic and now English prof at Vassar, Hua Hsu asks some great questions in his hot-off-the-press Atlantic cover story, itself a question, “The End of White America?” — What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America? I especially […]

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Where Do I Begin (To Tell the Story)?

As long as we’re on the topic of “Arab Face” I’ve decided to dust off and finish up this post that’s long been sitting in my drafts folder. (It’s post #100, and I’ve recently published #400, if that’s any indication of how long it’s been on a backburner.) There are countless twisty, tangly stories of […]

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Flag This: A Glance @ Google Nationalism

What can be gleaned by glancing at the first page of returns via Google Images for certain nations and their flags? I don’t know exactly, but I found the results fascinating enough to take several screenshots. I do like the play between a sort of repetitive stability and the occasional, odd (but telling) aberration, e.g., […]

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linkthink #519292: Loosing My Mind [sic]

Shaggy feat Trix & Flix – Feel The Rush | The Heatwave Blog – dancehall reggae and bashment “la cumbia cienaguera” of samim’s “heater” fame (and a hit in its own right in south america for decades) gets yet another odd reanimation via shaggy and the euro 08 football cup :: and round and round […]

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linkthink #69377: Who Wants to Bet That Obama Becomes a Far More Common First Name Than Barack?

Berkman Center pioneers steer the course of cyberspace – USATODAY.com gwaan charlie & co.! (tags: berkman harvard internet academia education activism charlie) DTLBASSTOWN.mp3 (audio/x-mpeg Object) crazed dance mix by dropthelime, as played recently @ basstown (tags: DJ mix mp3 house techno club remix boston) Energy Flash | Gas (director’s cut) simon reynolds on gas (wolfgang […]

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Notes on Neighborhood

Although my research/interests often turn to (trans)nationalism, lately I’ve been thinking less about nationhood and more about neighborhood — not in terms of an actual space or place (though that’s part of it), but something more akin to neighborliness, to being a good neighbor, to finding an ethics of neighborhood in an intensively globalized/mediated era. […]

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Hip-hop Japanthropology & the End of the Jews

Recently I brought two authors to campus to share their work with my class — that’s the only connection between the two otherwise disparate topics in the title of this post. (Hope I didn’t alarm anyone by implying improbable causal relationships.) … 1. The “hip-hop Japanthropology” was c/o Ian Condry, a professor at MIT who […]

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Conversación Cumbia2.0 Continúa

thx to all for the continuing cumbia convo, esp those who have left comments and/or sent emails (is it telling that not all can be aired here?) i guess this stuff cuts close to the bone, but that’s how we like it here at w&w — jugando con fuego desde 2003! & thx to KG […]

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Congatronix

For any readers whose curiosity was piqued by the conga videos in last night’s del.icio.us dump, allow me to provide a little more context via Lani Milstein, a NY-based ethnomusicubanist, who brought them to my attention — Just a shout out to say thanks for being such an eloquent writer on reggaetón. I’m working on […]

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If That’s What You Mean

Mark Dery: Have you ever felt, as one of the few blacks writing SF, the pressure to write science fiction deeply inscribed with the politics of black nationalism? Samuel R. Delany: The answer there depends on what your question means. If you mean: Do I feel that, deep within my work, I’ve situated material that […]

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Simon Says: I’m a Hipster?

Dang. I think Simon just referred to my blog as “hipster chatter.” Them’s fightin words, Reynolds. I mean, I’m sayin, I only own one belt and maybe 3 pairs of sneakers, tops. For serious tho, I’m very curious to know what constitutes hipsterism — for Simon and for others — at this moment in time. […]

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iReggaeton?

Next week (Thursday, Oct 11, from 12:00pm – 1:45pm to be exact) I’ll be presenting at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, being held this year in Philadelphia (at the Marriott, natch, which is offering a lovely “conference rate” of $200/night). I’m not so excited about the hotel deal, but I’m excited about […]

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Tons o’ Tons, or Distributed Reading #5382

I tagged a “raï-ggaeton” video over at my linkythinky a while back. A bit o’ chutney-ton, too. Both seemed interesting to me as rather explicit examples of the localization of global pop (and rton in partic), if not terribly compelling as specific things &, yeah, rather steeped in the odor of novelty. That’s not the […]

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The Webnography of Reggaeton Faultlines

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve gleaned lots of what I know ’bout the narratives swirling ’round reggaeton via the web, especially via the messageboard debates that flare up into all sorts of contested, conflicting accounts and claims. In that sense, I’ve maybe learned less about reggaeton’s history this way, per se, than about how people […]

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Reggaeton’s Contempo Indexical Lexica

As I’ve argued before — and will be arguing next week in Mexico City — one can hear reggaeton’s embrace of tecno synths and “Latin” loops as an audible shift from (explicitly, sonically marking itself as) “música negra” to “reggaeton latino.” Such a change, I contend, corresponds to an attendant shift in the cultural politics […]

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